Following is the text of the Supplemental United States Submission of Information to the UN Security Council in Accordance with Paragraph 5 of Resolution 771 (1992) and Paragraph 1 of Resolution 780 (1992), released on December 7, 1992.
This is the fourth submission by the United States Government of information pursuant to paragraph 5 of Security Council resolution 771 (1992) relating to the violation of humanitarian law, including grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, being committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. As in our three previous reports, we have focused on grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and, in accordance with resolution 771, have provided information that is "substantiated," that is, which rests upon eyewitness testimony directly available to us or that includes details sufficient for corroboration. For the moment, we have also tried not to duplicate information provided to us from other countries and non-governmental sources, which we understand will submit reports pursuant to Resolutions 771 and 780. The information provided is intended to be useful to the commission of experts established pursuant to Security Council resolution 780. The United States has further substantiating information concerning the incidents included in this report, which we will make available directly to the commission of experts on a confidential basis.
In accordance with paragraph 1 of resolution 780, the United States intends to continue providing reports as additional relevant information comes into our possession.
The United States is pleased that the commission of experts established pursuant to resolution 780 has begun its work. We particularly welcome its steps with regard to investigations of sites in the former Yugoslavia that may contain important information about violation of humanitarian law. We stand ready to assist the commission in its important work of investigating war crimes allegations with the aim of preparing cases suitable for prosecution and, by doing so, of establishing the record of humanitarian offenses in the former Yugoslavia.
As in our previous reports, the notation at the end of each of the items indicate the source from which the information was drawn. Unless otherwise indicated the reports refer to incidents occurring in 1992.
(1) 25 September 92:A 48-year-old Bosnian Muslim was picked up from the street in his home town of Bijeljina on September 25 or 26 and brought to a detention camp at Klis, near Batkovic. The facility at Klis, formerly used for storing agricultural produce, was guarded by men in solid green uniforms. The witness described how three "rich men" were singled out for special abuse; they were beaten with fists, rifle butts, and kicking: a neighbor who traded in gold and jewelry; a coffee trader; and another with whom the witness was not acquainted.
During the witness's second night in the camp, he saw the coffee trader and several others taken at different times from their building to an adjacent facility. There was lots of screaming during their absences. The others returned eventually but the coffee trader never did. The witness learned later that the coffee trader's corpse had been turned over to his family some time after that.
The gold trader suffered a similar fate on the witness's fifth night at the Klis facility; he died from his wounds. The other ÒwealthyÓ man who was beaten frequently along with first two victims never returned after being summoned to a nearby building one evening. The witness said an old cleaning man had told him that the third man also died from the beatings. (Department of State)
(2) 25 July 92:
A 14-year-old boy from the village of Zecovi, near Prijedor, witnessed the murder of 33 people on July 25.
The boy said that on July 19 or 20 a number of Serbs in uniform, none of whom he recognized, came to a small enclave of Muslim households near the outskirts of Zecovi. At gunpoint, Serbs forced people out of their homes and incarcerated them in the cellar of one of thei houses. After being held for more than 2 days, those detained were released without explanation and allowed to go back to their homes.
A few days later, on July 25, another group of Serbs appeared, also uniformed. They ordered people out of their homes, but in the confusion, the boy was able to hide behind the board leaning against the house and his absence was not noticed. The boy witnessed these men line up 33 people and shoot them summarily with semiautomatic rifles; they then used pistols to finish off anyone who was still moving. (Department of State)
Asked if he had recognized any of this group, the witness said "they were our neighbors" from the village. He was able to identify 29 victims by name as well as five of those who took active part in the shooting.
(3) 21 July - 4 August 92:
A 36-year-old Bosnian Muslim was in his village of Ribvanovici, near Prijedor, when the Serbian army surrounded all the villages in the area on July 21, and took all of the adult males prisoner - an incident reported in an earlier submission.
The Serbian soldiers beat the prisoners with their rifles. One man began to cry, so the soldiers shot him. Half the men, including this witness, were bussed to Keraterm camp in Prijedor, then to Omarska, and finally Trnopolje. The witness does not know what happened to those left behind. After a day at Trnopolje, the witness was taken back to Omarska camp and put into the "white house," where he was kept [for] about 15 days. He was locked in a room with dozens of men, many of whom he recognized from his village. He said that every day the prisoners were taken into one of five interrogation rooms and beaten with iron bars and wooden sticks.
His sister's husband was beaten to death in this manner. He had been beaten so badly one night that part of his forehead was missing, apparently taken off by an iron bar. He died soon thereafter. The witness once watched through the window as guards took prisoners out of the "white house," told them to run, and then shot them in the back as they fled. He heard what he believed were many other executions, but said they were done behind the building where they could not be seen, or in a red building nearby.
Each night, guards would choose two prisoners to bury the dead. The witness was forced to help one night and saw 11 corpses. He said the guards had them stack the bodies crosswise in a pit. Sometime around August 4, he was transferred from Omarska. (Department of State)
(4) 20 July 92:
A 52-year-old man was bussed to the Keraterm camp on July 20 with hundreds of others from Hambarine, near Prijedor. He was crammed along with several hundred other men into the third of four halls that formed a row on the former factory premises. From the start of his interment, he saw Muslim men regularly beaten with iron bars and rifle butts.
Every night until he was released on August 5, men were taken outside hall number three and shot. A friend, Mustafa Ramolic, was hauled outside a few days after the witness's arrival and beaten by Serb guards. His friend collapsed, coughing blood until he died later that evening. The witness observed a mass execution on July 24. It had been an extremely hot day. The doors and windows were closed and the men were screaming for water. What they finally received was contaminated so badly that it caused about 20 men to collapse or faint. The witness and other detainees were convinced that the water had been poisoned.
Perhaps in response to the tumult, about 15 Serb guards came in about 10 pm and began beating the prisoners with their rifle butts until they fell. As the situation deteriorated, the guards occasionally fired their rifles into the crowd of prisoners who gradually pulled back toward the large garage door at one end of the hall.
When they reached the door, the guards began shooting their rifles and machine guns into the crowd of inmates. The witness positioned himself behind the door and feigned death. The entire incident, from the opening of the doors until the shooting stopped, took about one half hour. At dawn, the following day, "volunteers" were chosen to load 130 bodies on trucks; his brother was among the dead. The witness saw approximately 40 wounded, who had waited for what they were told would be another truck to take them to a hospital, eventually loaded with the corpses and taken away.
A second massacre took place at about 6 am on July 26. Six soldiers entered the hall and ordered about 50 prisoners outside, the six Serbian guards began firing their automatic weapons. When all 50 had fallen, the guards went around shooting those who were still groaning. The witness recognized those who took part in this second mass execution.
Following this second massacre, 10 "volunteers" were again selected to load the corpses. They had to ride in the same truck that took the bodies away. The 10 "volunteers" never came back. The same day, inmates were evacuated from all the halls. About one dozen from each were tasked with cleaning and hosing down the halls. The rumor was that the camp had received a new commander, and that some international commission was expected to inspect the facilities. The "commission" came on August 5, when busses took the witness and other inmates to Trnopolje. (Department of State)
(5) 9 July 92:
A 35-year-old Muslim woman from Trnopolje described her husband's murder. On July 9, her husband was taken to a detention camp at a nearby school, but was quickly released because the Serbs running the camp recognized him as a famous "Yugoslav" athlete who had won the 1981 European body building championship in London.
Soon after his return, upon hearing of Serbian evictions of Muslim residents from the area, the family left their home. When the witness ran back to get something she had forgotten, four soldiers standing at nearby corner stopped her husband and ordered his two children to keep going. The children were further down the street when their mother -- the witness -- caught up with her husband and the four soldiers. One of them, once considered to be a friend of her husband, spoke to them briefly.
The soldiers then ordered her to move on, saying her husband had to stay there. She tried to give him the key to their home, but he, too, told her to move on and catch up with her children. She did so, and was about 20 meters away when shots rang out behind her. The children were about to turn a corner at the end of the street when the shots were fired. All of them, crying, tried to go back, but were blocked by other soldiers.
Two days later when the witness was allowed to return to her home for food, she saw her husband's corpse, which apparently had not been moved from the spot where he had been summarily executed 2 days earlier. (Department of State)
(6) 11 June - 10 October 92:
A 24-year-old Bosnian Muslim from Kotor Varos was arrested as a civilian and interned in several locations in Kotor Varos from June 11 until October 10. He described how he had been viciously and sadistically beaten several times, had witnessed forced sex acts among male prisoners, and had been forced at gunpoint to participate in the gang rape/killing of a Muslim woman.
On one day, the witness and 11 other prisoners were forced to participate in the rape of a Muslim policeman's wife. He exclaimed "They did everything. You can't imagine or believe what they did. They are animals!" He said that the woman died from her injuries one week later.
During the first 8 days of her internment, a Serbian TV news crew from Banja Luka arrived and accused him of beating women and killing fetuses during his tenure as a soldier for the Croatian forces. He was required to read such a statement admitting to these acts because a Serbian army captain threatened to kill his parents and family members if he did not.
The witness was later transferred to a room in the back of the Osnovni Sud or town courthouse, where he said that three men died in his arms from the beatings and injuries they endured: Enver Beharic, Mato Vatelj, and Smajo Celinac. He named these men, and claimed that their bodies were mutilated after their deaths. All three men were killed between August 13 and 15. The witness stated further that the number of people killed in Kotor Varos was almost unimaginable. On June 11 alone, 300-400 corpses lay in the street. He and several other prisoners had to put the corpses into black nylon body bags. The bags were then carried by a bulldozer to a nearby mass grave, and he described the location in detail. He said that he personally put over 70 bodies into bags that day and estimated that a minimum of 1,000 people were buried in this grave. (Department of State)
(7) June-July 92:
A 21-year-old Serbian fighter described his own shooting of 10 members of a Muslim family in late June in Ahatovici:
It was taken for granted among us that they should be killed. So when somebody said 'Shoot,' I swung around and pulled the trigger, three time on automatic fire. I remember the little girl with the red dress hiding behind her granny.
The Serbian fighter recounted another incident in which he used a 6-inch hunting knife to cut the throats of three captured Muslims.
He claimed to have made visits every 3 or 4 days to a motel and restaurant complex outside Vogosca -- located 7 miles north of Sarajevo -- known as the Sonja Cafe, which had been converted into a prison for Muslim women. He identified the "prison commander," who he said had established a "system" for the Serbian fighters to rape and kill the women interned there. He and his companions were encouraged to go to the Sonja Cafe by military commanders because raping Muslim women was "good for raising the fighters'morale." They were further told by the prison commander:
You can do with the women what you like. You can take them away from here -- we don't have enough food for them anyway -- and don't bring them back.
This fighter claimed to have raped and murdered eight women from the motel prison complex. He also said he had seen 30 men from Donja Bioca being shot and loaded --some alive -- into a furnace at a steel plant at Ilijas, a town north of Vogosca in July. (The New York Times)
(8) Late June 92:
A 27-year-old Bosnian Muslim watched Serbian Chetniks conduct mass executions on a bridge at Brod, 4 kilometers south of Foca, on three consecutive evenings toward the end of June. He witnessed the executions from a hiding place in the attic of a Serbian friend's home.
At about 6 pm of the first day, this witness saw Serb soldiers march small groups of Muslim men onto the bridge in Brod. In the middle of the bridge, which was about 100 meters long, the Chetniks interrogated Muslims for about 2 hours. Among the 20 to 30 Muslim men, the witness could recognize from his hiding place four friends: Ramo Kadric, Saban Kurtovic, Nusret Cengic, and Ibro Colakovic. Just as it was getting dark, the haranguing stopped and the shooting started. About eight of the 30 to 40 soldiers fired their automatic weapons at their tied-up Muslim captives. The witness was able to identify the man in charge of the Serbs on the bridge. When there were no signs of life among the Muslims, the Serbs dumped their bodies over the meter-high wall of the bridge into the Drina River, about 20 meters below.
The following evening, the Chetnik band led another column of Muslim prisoners to the bridge from the other direction. This group was from the witness' hamlet of Trnovac, and involved 50 to 60 captives. They were killed in the same fashion. Among the victims he recognized were : Esad Beckovic, Esad Dzin, Nedzad Dzin, Dzevad Beckovic, Zvijerac Beckovic, Hamdija Beckovic, and Serif Beckovic.
The next massacre on the bridge occurred close to midnight of the third evening. The victims were brought to the bridge by bus and truck from the town of Miljevina, about 8 kilometers northwest of Brod, also on the opposite side of the river. The entire operation was carried out more quickly; this time there were about 50 men murdered.
The wives and children of the victims were kept for several days in an area school, during which time they had to sign over the ownership papers to their homes. (Department of State)
(9) 31 May - July 92:
A 43-year-old Muslim from Hambarine was picked up on May 31 in Prijedor by Serb militiamen and herded along with other Muslims into one of the buses and trucks waiting to take them to Keraterm. He claims the more educated Muslims were taken to Omarska. The witness saw four of the Muslim captives randomly shot to death as the loading process took place. He know two of the victims, brothers Suelgo and Irmo Dzafic.
The Keraterm facility was divided into four subdivisions or halls. The witness was in hall number one. On July 22 or 24, a hall at the opposite end of the facility was packed with prisoners from an area where heavy fighting had taken place, and where the Serbs reportedly had sustained heavy casualties.
The Serbs machine-gunned to death about 200 of newly arrived prisoners in that hall. The witness said many of the inmates could see the massacre in the adjacent hall number three, so word of what was taking place spread almost instantly. He and all the occupants could hear the firing and screaming, which lasted for about 15 to 20 minutes.
The following morning he also observed trucks loaded with corpses driving from hall number four past the window of hall number one where he was detained. About five men were taken from his hall to help load the corpses. Another man with a badly infected arm was put on a truck full of corpses along with about 20 other injured men. The witness never saw this man again and believes he was killed. (Department of State)
(10) 25 May 92:
A 30-year-old Muslim was in Kozarac when the Serbs began a massive artillery bombardment in the mid-afternoon of May 25. As he and a crowd that he estimated at 10,000 to 12,000 headed for the shelter of the nearby forest, the Serbs directed their fire at fleeing civilians. Five or six women running near the witness were killed by a shell just before they reached the tree line. (Department of State)
(11) 18 May 92:
A 33-year-old Muslim from Grbavci -- 2 kilometers from Zvornik -- described a mass killing in the morning of May 18. As Serb militiamen surrounded the village and started shooting, he and several family members fled.
Residents of nearby houses were doing the same. Inside the village, the Serb militia occupiers, using megaphones, ordered residents to go back to their homes and put white sheets in their windows. Many of the neighbors obeyed, but this witness and his family decided to wait in their hiding places inside the three line to assess the situation further.
As his neighbors returned to the housing area, hands over their heads, the Serb militiamen separated men from women and children. The witness watched from about 200 meters as the men were lined up. Shortly after noon, one of the Serbs shouted an order to "kill the Ustasha." On this command, about 10 of militiamen began emptying their automatic weapons into the line of Muslim men and continued shooting until they were all dead. When the shooting stopped, the executioners and other Serb militia, many of whom had been standing around watching, started plundering houses in the village and stealing livestock.
The witness, his family, and other neighbors returned from their hiding places three days later. He participated along with other neighbors in the burial of 56 victims. They were buried about 20 meters from the edge of the existing cemetery, between two rows of houses, near the spot where they were shot. (Department of State)
(12) 9 May 92:
A 41-year-old Bosnian Muslim woman witnessed the execution of a Serbian civilian by Serbian soldiers in Sarajevo. At about 7 am on May 9 or 10, military units wearing the insignias of Serbian Chetniks and the Yugoslav army entered the area (near Sarajevo airport) and ordered all its residents out of the cellars in which they had taken refuge. Once outside, Serbs were told to stand in one place and Muslims in another.
One Serb, a 50-year-old man known as "Ljubo," refused to be separated from his Muslim neighbors, with whom he apparently had lived peacefully for many years. His refusal to be separated from his neighbors enraged the Serbian soldiers. They dragged him to the ground, and five or six beat him until he was dead.
The witness and a group of about 40 other Muslims from the area were then used as human shields and marched through a heavily contested combat zone to waiting Serb vehicles some 300 meters away. From there, they were driven to Trapare, a camp or assembly area some 3 kilometers away.
After their arrival at Trapare, a young girl -- about 12 years old -- was taken from her father. About six men took the girl behind a bunker. The witness said she then could hear the most terrible screaming and crying she had ever heard. After the father collapsed, he was dragged at knife point to the bunker and forced to watch as the soldiers repeatedly raped his daughter, an ordeal which lasted about one hour. Neither the father nor his daughter was returned to others afterward. The witness believes both were killed. (Department of State)
(13) 5 May 92:
In an October letter to President Bush, a Muslim refugee from Brcko described in detail his internment in Brcko camp in northern Bosnia. Below is an informal translation of segments of the letter pertaining to Brcko:
On May 5 a representative of the Yugo army in a radio broadcast instructed the citizens in my part of the town to go to the army barracks, from where the Yugo army would organize an evacuation to a safer place.
Upon our arrival at the barracks, we realize we were all in trap because there, together with the regular army, were Chetniks and other Serbian refuse. They offered to give us rifles if we would fight against our own people for the Serbian cause. The Muslims and Croats silently refused. Our wives and children were put on a bus and were taken to an unknown destination.
At gunpoint, we were also put on a bus. We were taken to one of Brcko's places of execution, a physical education hall in the center of the town. We noticed, from the puddles of blood on the floor, that the executions had already begun. For the couple hundred of us who were locked up, the long hours of torture began.
...they took four of us out for execution. They put one of us against the wall and ... shot him in the back with a machine gun. Looking at the holes in his back ... I lost consciousness, and my body crumbled onto pieces of glass. My fainting awakened a bit of humanity in the Serbs' leader. He ordered them to bring me back to the hall, where I could rest a little. One of the Serbs took satisfaction removing my glasses and breaking them.
The other three men were killed in the most cruel manner. First they were beaten in another room and left to recover a little. They were taken to a courtyard where we heard the worst sounds a human throat can produce. We heard the dull slashes of knives cutting into human flesh. The three men were held by their legs and beaten while against the wall of the building where we were imprisoned. With about 20 more shots, the Serbs assured the three mensÕ death. All that I have written here can be confirmed by three other witnesses who also managed to escape from that hell. I think we were lucky that we went through all this in the first days of the Serbian occupation, while the Serbian killing machinery was not so well developed yet. (Department of State)